#flash trading

We sought shelter with Iceage and their recommended latest effort, ventured into the ruins of rising Austin alexalone and from station to station with Mega Bog throughout the week. Chelsea Wolfe unleashed a wonder of a portrait for the latest DC Comics storyline, Gulfer and Charmer were at odds with the real world around them, and Bad Bunny deflected the haters in his by throwing up his millions in their faces. Meanwhile, the latest song reviews came by way of the 606 from rising electronic production duo Gone to Color and cosmic hardcore memory makers Turnstile.

Here are the rest of the week’s song and video highlights….

AFI - “Tied To A Tree” [Rise Records]

You’d think after releasing half an album’s worth of singles so far from their forthcoming 11th studio effort Bodies, AFI would be done, but ahead of the album’s June 11th release date, they’re putting one last nail in the coffin with a very good, eerily quiet, yet heavy goth ballad offering entitled “Tied To A Tree’. The listen, which maximizes blank space, subtle, cold electronic production over faint, skeletal acoustics and thunderous choral climaxes around Davey Havok’s voice, is a fitting punctuation mark of drama in the dark amid the album’s array of cyberpunk anthems, shoegazing, and post-punk atmospherics they’ve crossed with “Twisted Tongues”, “Escape from Los Angeles”, “Looking Tragic”, “Begging for Trouble”, “Dulceria” and “Far Too Near”.

Cold Cave - “Psalm 23″ [Heartworm Press]

“Psalm 23″ is the third single off Cold Cave’s forthcoming EP Fate In Seven Lessons, due out on June 11th, and is perhaps the most curious-sounding previews we’ve heard from Wes Eisold’s dark pop outlet. Unlike the '80s new wave-indebted “Night Light” and the slick industrial mechanics of “Prayer to Nowhere”, “Psalm 23″ writes itself a stylistic detour from the familiar dark paths Eisold and company have taken over the years by branching synthetic lines into hallucinogenic patterns that make for Cold Cave’s most decidedly psychedelic listen yet. The band is zoned in for the listen’s accompanying video directed by Travis Shinn and Jeremy Danger, which sees its members vibing in the dark surrounded by candles which Mark Lanegan apparently gifted them.

Flash Trading - “Drifting” [House of Feelings]

Photo courtesy of Katherine Graci

“Can’t you see that I’m drifting free / I’m waiting for the stars to go?”, sings Flash Trading vocalist Dani Laundry on “Drifting”, the third single from the underground experimental pop duo’s forthcoming debut album City of Refuge, due out later this year. Since emerging with those plans in the form of caffeinated longing in its lead single “Show Cause” or the sun-dazzled observations of “Know the Answer”, the Brooklyn pair have been professing an M.O. for tying inverted feelings into motion. That’s no different here as Laundry’s waning patience falls back into a cool blur of dance synths, before asking “Do you want to trust in me?” The space around her is soon consumed by white hot light, and before you know it, she’s disappeared with it.

Drifting by Flash Trading

Foxing - “Where the Lightning Strikes Twice” [Grand Paradise / Hopeless Records]

Photo courtesy of Hayden Molinarolo

After a lengthy, ominous build, Foxing have finally revealed the details behind their fourth studio effort Draw Down the Moon. It was produced by slick indie rock producer John Congleton, arrives August 6th on their newly launched imprint Grand Paradise in conjunction with Hopeless Records, and will include previous singles in the theatric, sci-fi synth prog exploration “Speak With the Dead” and the recent indie festival-scaled lifter “Go Down Together”. Latest preview “Where the Lightning Strikes Twice” deals with the ups and downs of success as an artist from a creative and financially existential perspective, with the latter digging further into the ground given the past year. Despite the grief, the band finds more power in embracing 2010s neon indie anthems than loud emo rock clangor these days to contend with the weather of these times.

Jim Ward - “Foreign Currency” [Dine Alone Records]

One of last year’s most underrated and best heavy listens from post-hardcore lifer scene came from the return of Sparta, the post-At the Drive-In vehicle of guitarist Jim Ward, and their grounded-from-the-atmosphere comeback effort Trust the River. Ward, on his own merits, has remained prolific in Sparta’s 14-year absence through his Americana punk band Sleepercar as well as his own solo work, but early impressions from his forthcoming of the latter, Daggers, due out June 11th, touches closest to the surface of where Trust the River left us. Recorded alongside Thursday drummer Tucker Rule and Incubus bassist Ben Kenney, its latest single “Foreign Currency” projects a silvery shine of guitars into outer space from the Earth’s atmosphere, and all its cautionary warnings from life on this planet with it. Previous to this, Ward previewed the album with "Paper Fish” and “I Got A Secret”, featuring War On Women’s Shawna Potter.

Daggers by Jim Ward

Modest Mouse - “Leave A Light On” [Epic]

Photo courtesy of James Jainer

Between that Foxing track above and “Leave the Light On”, the latest preview off Modest Mouse’s first new album in six years, The Golden Casket -- which arrives on June 25th -- it very much sounds like we are in the midst of a revival of indie rock’s golden radio era from the first decade of the 2000s. Modest Mouse are no strangers to themselves in that regard, though hearing them embrace bright, churning digital keys and effervescent effects wasn’t really their style back then. On the heels of recent single “We Are Between”, the album’s second advance preview “Leave A Light On” is a mutating arena-sized indie space odyssey painted in with portraits of equally eccentric characters from the Isaac Brock universe.

Sleater-Kinney - “High In the Grass” [Mom + Pop]

Photo courtesy of Karen Murphy

Honestly, I don’t think it’s merely for the sake of a solid tour packaging that Wilco and Sleater-Kinney are teaming up this summer. As we get closer to the latter’s 10th studio effort Path to Wellness, set for release on June 11th, Carrie Brownstein and Corinne Tucker are sounding looser and shaggier with their hot rock licks than they did on 2019′s polarizing pop swerve The Center Won’t Hold . Following the album’s lead single “Worry With You”, “High In the Grass” is the latest example of their style mirroring who they’ll be surrounding themselves with a lot more of in the coming months through a jTucker-led jam about spring and summertime while being caught up in youth’s bliss. “We lock up when the pollen’s up / We love when the party’s on / There is only this day for us to move / We live just a moment long,” she proclaims. Kelly Sears directed its hippie-hued animated visuals.

With their recent single “Show Cause”, Flash Trading made it obvious to see how well they knew their way around hyperactive indie-pop with a sweet, synthetic synthesis. “Know the Answer”, the second single from the Brooklyn duo’s forthcoming debut album City of Refuge, brings to light corners more so revealing in what happens to their sound when the pair decelerates from the speed at which the world moves around them.

Over an elixir of gleaming synthesizers, a relaxed strum, and solar psychedelia occasionally breaking through the clouds, it’s as if producer Michael Julius and vocalist Dani Laundry are walking across the electronic and pop universes, collecting stardust from the soundwaves of Boards of Canada, the borderlines of Madonna, and their own scene’s strange periscope peering the the color spectrum. Landry's lyrics, searching for context and answers, help slow time and motion down, and in doing so, the pair absorb a greater picture from their surroundings.

Hanchang Sohn takes us for a self-aware stroll in the city in the song’s music video.

A couple years back, we were first introduced to Flash Trading -- the NYC-based duo of primary songwritier, keyboardist and producer Michael Julius and vocalist Dani Laundry -- with a promising flourish of art-pop through a white hot prism on the single “Pearly Fire”. Later this June, they’ll be releasing their debut album City of Refuge on House of Feelings, and akin to their label ANDREW, the energy of a return to motion and sound in our daily lives is palatable on the album’s first single “Show Cause”.

Hyper-kinetic are the four-on-the-floors and as ultrabright, lucid synths cascade over their surface, the pair forms an inviting layer of pop ice eased over the crystallizing beat. “I believe it’s overflowing / There’s no reason and no time,” heralds Laundry, as a chorus of voices spills further over. Eventually, words are no match for the energy Flash Trading submerge them in.

Show Cause by Flash Trading

Flash Trading - “Pearly Fire”

For the first time in a very long time, New York City is rediscovering itself through a sound well beneath the layers of the underground. It makes sense. The latter half of this decade gave way to poptimism, algorithm-supplied listening experiences, major labels regaining a stronghold over the industry, and independent artists left to balance playing by the new rules or going at it alone knowing they’ll end up breaking even at most for it no matter what. That last part is where many within NYC’s five buroughs are opting, and for the better, as it has pushed a reclaimation of pure expression in thoughts and emotions devoid of trend into sound. What more is that it’s intensely human in its movement even when it’s aided by artificial instruments and varying facets of darkness and light.

Flash Trading -- the duo of primary songwritier, keyboardist and producer Michael Julius and vocalist Dani Laundry -- are designing a path in a dance pattern for their every expression on this soundscape much like their Brooklyn contemporaries Ava Luna and Public Practice. Following the release of a handful of singles and EPs, they’ve also found a fitting home for it on the burgeoning independent artist collective House of Feelings, with their latest single “Pearly Fire” allowing the heart beat to be their guide. The listen very much breathes in the air of of a Brooklyn autumn: cool to the touch with the glint of sunlight fading, walking in it as everything around you blurs, wondering what comes next.

For Laundry, these sensations come through in hopes and doubts, with the only thing in her sights being an oncoming crush unrequited. “When you speak to me, a flame burns in my belly / Thinkings so internally, I can’t but help but feel / Just being friendly,” she sings as a wistfulness washes over the butterflies. “Nothing to get excitedly / Something turns pearly / I can’t help but cry.” Julius’ Juno 60 chords channel those emotions by forming glassy crescendos where she daydreams a will to make that love story a reality, and vaporizing them where her imagined reality suddenly makes her surroundings clear. Maybe the world Flash Trading are building in their music isn’t fixed in one side or another. It’s the possibility of either happening, and what allows “Pearly Fire” to breathe in every feeling as it happens to you in the moment.

Pearly Fire by Flash Trading

Flash Trading - “Acceleration”